Notes from the Left Coast

Drummond Pike’s Blog

This has been one weird week. As fuel prices rise, I feel like I’m a one man band causing scarcity across the country. Here’s the past week:

Last Friday, flew to Chicago at the end of a busy day in SF and overnighted at the O’Hare Hilton. Now there’s a fun time. At least I avoided the tunnel and broke out into the big outdoors to a fantastic 70 degree evening in Chicago. Gorgeous weather as I crossed the traffic bound street to some odd stares of a couple of cabbies. Up early the next day to catch a plane to Hartford, Conn. where, thank the goddess, Kim had hired a car to get me to the Threshold meeting in an obscure NW corner of the state in Lakeville. Turned out the previous day they’d been hit with a storm that left dozens of stately trees lying across streets and driveways. Looked like a tornado had hit. Jumped into the Threshold swirl, as Ann B. once termed it, and helped out with orientation. Had a great walk with my old friend, Roger Miliken from Maine. Once my partner on a wilderness fast for four nights alone in the White Mountains, he’s become a regular guide for others in a questing frame of mind. Found myself drawn back to that deep time, as Roger and I walked in pitch black darkness down to the lake and caught up.

Threshold has become a treasure and a long time partner/ally of Tides, and both of us have thrived from the synergy. I was remarking to John H., who is just finishing up with his (more…)

I’ve spent part of each of the past two weeks in DC - first for a Board Retreat of Island Press, and today for a meeting of the irrepressible Environmental Working Group. In both cases, these terrific organizations are dealing with complicated change. Island has to deal with the changing nature of the publishing worlds and the challenging economics of publishing books. IP, by the way, is one of the leading publishers of environmental subject matter in the country and have frequently published books that have directly led to policy changes and the like. Gretchen Daily’s Nature’s Services has literally shifted thinking about the economic role our natural systems play in our system. Alter them at our peril is one lesson you can derive. And Apollo’s Fire is helping people really understand the potential economic boom that can be fueled by agressively attempting to deal with climate change in our urban environments. Really good stuff.

In the picture above, you see Ken Cook, founder of the Environmental Working Group and his sidekick, Richard Wiles, who have built one of the most impressive environmental research and advocacy organizations in the country. Ken is holding forth on the prospects for their “Kids Safe Chemicals Act” idea which would change the way acceptable chemical burdens are measured. Kids just don’t do as well as adults in their ability to manage toxic accumulations, yet our regulatory system measures only adults. Crazy.

EWG also recently had a huge “win” when reports finally confirmed their long held argument that endocrine disrupters (now there’s a mouthful) can be toxic in even small amounts. There is a call in California to ban the use of one - bisphenyl A - which has made EWG the object of, how does one say….the close attention of the chemical industry. The industry’s association, by the way, changed their name to American Chemistry Council to sound less corporate. Needless to say, they don’t like the idea that groups like EWG publicize that humans are bio-accumulating toxics in our systems at quite a clip. Have you seen Ken’s remarkable “10 Americans” presentation? You won’t come away unchanged.

Also of interest:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EnvironmentalWG

Day One, Democracy Alliance Meeting, Carlsbad, CA:

I’m not sure why, but I have always enjoyed helping organizations that attract donors to strategic, progressive funding. For many years, Tides has supplied staffing as the Threshold Foundation has evolved into a vibrant community of some 300 donors interested in both personal exploration and support of progressive change in the communities and regions within which they live. More recently, I was able to join in the launching of the Democracy Alliance - a network of some 100 substantial donors to progressive causes that came together to share both the development of, and support for, a progressive infrastructure to rival that which the right has constructed over the last three decades.

Tonight marks the third anniversary of the DA - its seventh gathering of folks each of which is committed to six figure giving to help some 30 plus groups that have been identified as part of the core portfolio. They all work in one of four areas: leadership, civic participation, ideas, and media. Fantastic initiatives and organizations have been supported since the outset: America Votes, which helps non-partisan voter groups coordinate registration and GOTV efforts; Women’s Voices, Women Vote (a former Tides Center project) that targets unmarried women; Center for Progressive Leadership, that trains and encourages emerging progressive leaders; Center for American Progress, a comprehensive think tank generating policy ideas; the Kirwan Institute at Ohio State that focuses on structural racism; and Catalist, a new for-profit venture (and Tides Foundation grantee) that has built and makes available to non-profits a voter file resource that helps groups target disenfranchised communities.

Day 2: today we heard a great talk by Paul Begala on the need for progressives to come together once the primary is settled. In the meantime, independent voices need to focus on the policy differences that are already apparent between conservatives and progressives. The similarity between Sen. McCain’s positions and those of the current administration, and their disdain for progressive alternatives, is starkly apparent in the current debate. Given public sentiment, with over 2/3rds of Americans believing the country is headed in the wrong direction, progressive alternatives on health care, retirement, security, climate change, and a host of other issues ought to be gaining some real traction.

More later from La Costa…..dp

Just traveling back to SFO this morning after a great meeting of the Tides Canada Board in Vancouver. Wow. They are doing great! We helped establish our northern sister organization about 8 years ago under some not insignificant pressure from our friend Carol Newell and her sidekick Joel Solomon at the Endswell Foundation – an active funder of the British Columbia environmental community. As they have on and off and now on again made a commitment to spending out their endowment (truly the highest minded stewardship in my view), they wanted to leave an institutional legacy that supported progressive philanthropy and initiatives in the region to which they are so committed. And, boy, have they delivered. The founding ED, now CEO, Tim Dramin, has done a great job putting the organization on the map and developing a parallel to Tides Center – of which there are NO parallels in the entire country. But programmatically, they are rocking.

Here are some highlights:
• Tides Canada has been at the center of an incredible effort that brought together timber companies, First Nations leaders, environmentalists, US funders and, most remarkably, the Provincial Government in a joint effort to preserve the Great Bear Rainforest – 25% of the world’s remaining temperate rainforest is now permanently preserved while simultaneously a $120 million fund has been committed to support sustainable businesses in First Nations communities. Amazing stuff for an 8 year old institution.

• They have hired their first President to run things day-to-day who was the leading organizer of the Great Bear effort. Ross McMillan hails from Tofino on the west coast of BC, but now is in Vancouver helping to keep up with this rapidly growing enterprise.

• A recent draft strategic plan indicates Tides Canada will be aggressively launching into areas of social justice, climate change, and social finance. There was a long discussion at the Board Meeting about the critical state of low and moderate income housing in all of Canada’s major cities. Vancouver especially, it seems, has seen rental housing replaced by highrise condos that are largely held as investments and unoccupied. Lots to sort through on this issues, for sure.

On top of all this, CEO Tim Draimin is leading a policy initiative to establish program sponsorship and development - done up there by Sage Centre, a parallel to Tides Center - as an accepted and well developed way of doing business. No mean feat, I can assure you, given the complexities of the Canadian tax system.

All in all, I’d say our northern sister organization is in GREAT shape and continuing its innovative ways. Check them out!

Vancouver Skyline

Originally uploaded by Drummond Pike

while the US wallows in subprime chaos, Canada is rocking out with a huge construction boom, a strong currency, and SOCIALIZED medicine. As they say up here, "…go figure…." (Has the President ever
been to Canada?)

Have you ever wondered why the only thing we ever hear about is tax relief? When was the last time you can remember anyone advocating tax increases? Such is the stuff of political suicide in our “borrow now, pay later” politics. Remember Bush 1 and his famous “read my lips” statement?

So, I’ve been curious about how we got here for a long time. The fact of the matter is that we are living on borrowed time, if history is any measure. A fascinating chart on TruthandPolitics.org’s site shows the variation in our “maximum effective” tax rates for upper income taxpayers. During the two World Wars, people paid some serious taxes (77% and then 94% respectively). During Vietnam, the rate moved back up to the 77% level after having fallen steadily through the 50’s and early 60’s. Where are we now? 35%, at least until Bush 2’s tax cuts are termed out in 2010. And what do we have cooking? The most expensive war since Vietnam and a pending debate on national health insurance for all.

If the federal government was a business, it would have been abandoned in the free market ages ago as a failed enterprise.

An interesting comparison can be made to countries that have national health coverage: Canada – mid-40% (federal and province); Australia – 45%; New Zealand – 46%; and Austria – 50% (as are many European countries). Oh, and they have only a fraction of the military costs that we do.

So….when is one of these candidates running for President going to break the taboo, and return us to Kansas (from this Oz-like place we’ve been living in for the past 3 decades)?

This is Tides’ own fabulous Fennel Doyle who has introduced me to “mo blogging” - now that was a new one to me. Turns out that it refers to mobile blogging that one can do from one’s cell phone. Hence the picture of my personal guide to this realm which then was emailed to a previously established address that automatically posted it to my blog. Web 2.0 is here!!

Anyway, I’ll try to use it now and then to see how it goes. One can imagine blogging from a meeting or a demonstration as you were in the middle of it. Too much…..

A good friend (who lives in a distant place) has recently been grappling with the experience of authority – perhaps arbitrary, perhaps not. It is the experience, either way, that I’m pondering.

How many times have I challenged authority (rarely with success)? Challenging authority is quite different than challenging convention, or orthodoxy, or tradition, which I have done with regularity. Challenging authority is also very different than being its object. As the receiver of the exercise of authority, one wants to immediately defend oneself. “No I didn’t do that,” comes out of ones mouth almost before you realize it. Pre-programmed. But does that work?

Rarely, if ever, I suspect. As the object of authority, you have already been designated responsible for that of which you are accused. Now, you may or may not be responsible for what is at issue, but someone thinks you are. In my testosterone poisoned youth, I one time was so incensed about a speeding violation I was about to receive that I bounced out of the car as soon as I’d come to a stop. Suddenly, I was facing a drawn gun, and these days, I might well have been shot. Dumb. I didn’t stop to consider how I looked in the circumstances: in this case, I looked threatening – exactly the opposite of what I was trying to convey: outraged innocence.

In the ensuing years, I’ve learned the value of contrition, of accepting that I was wrong, and communicating that when true. No more being mistaken as a threat. And, when I’m not responsible, I’ve learned to express my understanding of how they must be looking at the situation, retaining my clarity of what is true, or at least I give it my best shot.

I don’t know how my friend will deal with the situation when he actually sits down with the authorities holding sway over him. What I hope is that he remembers the value in owning up to what he is truly responsible for, and never accepting what is said that is not true. But at the same time, I hope he is able to hold compassion for the accusers in getting it wrong – and expressing that to them. It is an odd, but compelling, expression of the deepest of moral tenets: do to others as you would want them to do to you. And, especially in circumstances of innocence, it is really hard to do.

Can you imagine an innocent victim of our Rendition Program, that grabs people and sends them to be tortured in Egypt or elsewhere, ever turning to his interrogator and expressing understanding about how wrong they have gotten it? And yet, I recall a story of a political dissident in Chile during the Pinochet days who forgave his torturers before each session, expressing his sadness at how they had been forced into these terrible acts they were about to subject him to. It is an act that places one above the fray, with clarity about the truth, and what matters more?

Help The Tides Center Body Positive project receive $25,000, by taking 2 seconds to vote for Connie Sobczak in the Volvo for Life Awards:
http://www.volvoforlifeawards.com/cgi-bin/iowa/english/vote/quality/index.html

We have one month left before the voting period ends (January 7th), so please VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! The rules state that you can VOTE AS OFTEN AS YOU’D LIKE, but no more than once per minute, otherwise your votes won’t count. Vote NOW, vote OFTEN and SPREAD THE WORD!

About Body Positive:
Many therapists and counselors in the psychological community are labeling the current state of eating disorder illnesses in this country as an epidemic. This project provides education on eating disorders and awareness of body-image issues to Bay Area pediatricians, middle and high-school students, teachers, school administrators and staff, as well as to the community-specific support systems for schools. The Body Positive believes the epidemic of eating disorders among teens warrants thoughtful, practical, effective change in the shape of a preventative awareness education approach.